Google Glass will speak to you by vibrating the bones in your head

You will wave your hands at Glass, and it will vibrate your head back at you.

Google Glass’ papers have arrived at the FCC, according to filings posted Thursday. The headset, likely the Explorer edition promised to developers at Google I/O last year, includes an 802.11 b/g 2.4 GHz WLAN, a low-energy Bluetooth 4.0 radio, and—if one sentence and a corresponding patent are to be believed—a “vibrating element” for transmitting sound to the user’s head via bone conduction.

Google filed a patent for a headset that uses bone conduction audio, which was granted only a week ago. The audio would work similar to that of certain children’s toothbrushes: a vibration transducer vibrates the bones in the user’s head, which translate the vibration to the cochlea, the fluid-filled cavity inside the ear, which then reads the vibrations as sound. The technology is already used in many headphones, with the advantage that such sound can be clearer than it is from the tiny speakers that are in earbuds.

In its FCC filing, Google makes only one mention of a “vibrating element” in the headsets, wherein a video stored within the headset plays and transmits audio via vibration. The video test was conducted as part of testing the Bluetooth Low Energy mode. Google has also indicated plans for user input to the headsets, including number pads projected onto surfaces and gesture interpretation from the headset’s camera.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin stated shortly after the 2012 Google I/O that ideally the company would get the Glass headsets into developer hands “early” this year. Google has already held one developer conference this past week in San Francisco, and a second conference is currently in progress in New York.

That's an interesting approach to audio which makes sense too. And I imagine it would be safer then shoving ear buds into your ears. However, if you're on something bumpy, like a train or a road in Boston, would that impact quality? Not noise (which already impacts sound quality anyway), but physical vibrations.

See: BAHA. I lost my hearing in one ear and one option was a BAHA device. These have been around forever and hearing tests often do bone and air conductive segments of the test. While they won't be screwing this into your skull the concept of using bone to transfer sound is quite well established.

See: BAHA. I lost my hearing in one ear and one option was a BAHA device. These have been around forever and hearing tests often do bone and air conductive segments of the test. While they won't be screwing this into your skull the concept of using bone to transfer sound is quite well established.

I believe that Beethoven actually wrote music while biting down on a stick that was attached to a piano. No idea if that's accurate, or just something I read somewhere on the internet, though.

But yes, the concept is pretty old, I remember when I was a kid, they sold suckers that played sounds by vibrating the stick.

This is still just vaguely interesting technology that belongs in a science fiction movie, not something that real, normal people are going to want to use. Too many geeks seem to be having wet dreams about these things and forgetting that the vast majority of people aren't going to want this. I would go further and say that the vast majority of geeks are going to end up saying that it's cool and interesting technology, but it's not something they'd buy. It's not only intrusive and looks even goofier than a bluetooth headset, but it's still a (theoretical) solution looking for a mainstream problem to solve. There's a subset of very specialized users who will find something similar to this useful (if it ever really works right), but I believe they'll soon take their place next to personal rocket packs, flying cars and weather domes over cities as failed technology predictions.

I'm betting you're wrong. Have this running VPN over the phone already in your pocket, tied to cloud based software as a service, and suddenly you can have your computer (and the internet) *everywhere*, with no need to lug anything around, stare at your phone, or have others able to see what you're looking at. You can have truly immersive games, interacting with real objects, you can read books you don't have to hold (not even holding an e-ink reader), you can get descriptive information on whatever you're looking at, you can take pictures of whatever you're looking at, all without doing a damn thing you're not already doing.

My bet is that this starts with the geeks, and becomes mainstream really, really quickly. Which might pressure the design to be incorporated in a less geeky way, but the concept is solid and will fly with the majority of the public.

A long time ago on a cross-Texas trip to college with a friend, our car broke down, and was towed to this repair shop. The dude pulls out this LONG screwdriver looking thing. It was perhaps four feet long and an inch thick. He stabbed it down into the engine somewhere and put his head against it to listen to some bit of the motor.

It was totally weird up until the moment I actually thought about what he was doing.

Eh, Engadget posted a hands-on with some bone conductance headphones at CES and found that because their ears aren't plugged with speakers, the very loud ambient noise made it extremely hard to hear the music.

If this is the case with other bone conductance headphones -- and I don't see why it wouldn't be, but I could be wrong -- then I don't want them.

However, if they're simply for the OS to report back actions and responses, they may find a tone that is easy to hear over background noise, and that would be cool. But it wouldn't be good for music except in a very quiet environment, by the sounds of things..

That's an interesting approach to audio which makes sense too. And I imagine it would be safer then shoving ear buds into your ears. However, if you're on something bumpy, like a train or a road in Boston, would that impact quality? Not noise (which already impacts sound quality anyway), but physical vibrations.

It likely won't make much of a difference. Noise is just vibrations anyway. This is method gets those vibrations directly into your head instead of passing through the membranes in the ear first. (Really simplified way of saying it.) About the only problem would be the train's vibrations knocking the thing loose.

This is still just vaguely interesting technology that belongs in a science fiction movie, not something that real, normal people are going to want to use. Too many geeks seem to be having wet dreams about these things and forgetting that the vast majority of people aren't going to want this. I would go further and say that the vast majority of geeks are going to end up saying that it's cool and interesting technology, but it's not something they'd buy. It's not only intrusive and looks even goofier than a bluetooth headset, but it's still a (theoretical) solution looking for a mainstream problem to solve. There's a subset of very specialized users who will find something similar to this useful (if it ever really works right), but I believe they'll soon take their place next to personal rocket packs, flying cars and weather domes over cities as failed technology predictions.

From a first pass point of view yeah... I think you're right. The first smart phones were all but crap. They mostly were just geeky things that didn't fit any real world needs. But a couple of revisions later and the iPhone hits the market and now look where we are.

The same is likely to happen here. These things are really not going to be much more than a proof of concept. Other folks will get in on the idea, make their own, tweak and redesign. And down the road there's a pretty big potential pay off.

Just what we need, yet another connector type. Soon your USBrain connector will be outdated and new products will be switching to HDMInd, except Apple with their typically proprietary iSynapse connector.

Bone conduction is an innovative way of getting around the loss of background noise problem. That has killed people before.

This will all come down to the battery life though I reckon.

Very good point actually! While it might not be the best overall for sound transport, the idea of having your vision slightly distracted would be a major safety concern. Add to that almost complete sensory takeover (hearing and sight) would be a major issue that might get glasses recalled if they went with an ear-bud option.

I'm quite sure one can include earbuds as well for a complete immersion experience. (I would as I work in a Data center) but for the general population, better to have something safe at first.

When these become popular, look out for the black hat crackers. They'll be running drivers off the wall, having people walk in front of vehicles, rattling peoples brains with optimal bone frequencies, etc. Then they'll listen in on your conversations and match faces to places and watch you type your "secret" PIN that you keep offline. Game over?

A long time ago on a cross-Texas trip to college with a friend, our car broke down, and was towed to this repair shop. The dude pulls out this LONG screwdriver looking thing. It was perhaps four feet long and an inch thick. He stabbed it down into the engine somewhere and put his head against it to listen to some bit of the motor.

It was totally weird up until the moment I actually thought about what he was doing.

I had to redo the fuel injectors on my car years ago. I used a screwdriver to tell which one was not firing in just that way.

I was helping a friend with a car they were looking at buying, we did it again to check the engine quality, turns out listening from underneath, we heard a bearing at the bottom of the engine starting to go. Walked away from it.

It's a long-established diagnostic tool. I've even seen a mouth-based one before now, so you can have your hands free.

My guess is that the bone-conduction will be used for ACK and NAK type messages. And they will sound suspiciously like the sounds made by the ship's computer on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

For actual music, conversations, video soundtracks, etc., I expect people will demand earbuds or even those ridiculous-looking high-end headphones. Note that the earpieces will probably be driven by your phone, rather than the glasses themselves, in an effort to make the glasses's battery last more than a couple hours.

As an audiologist I can say that bone conduction would require a fair bit of pressure to send a clear signal. I'm interested to see how Google would balance the comfort vs effectiveness. A consumer version would almost certainly allow for other options such as Bluetooth audio.

This is still just vaguely interesting technology that belongs in a science fiction movie, not something that real, normal people are going to want to use. Too many geeks seem to be having wet dreams about these things and forgetting that the vast majority of people aren't going to want this. I would go further and say that the vast majority of geeks are going to end up saying that it's cool and interesting technology, but it's not something they'd buy. It's not only intrusive and looks even goofier than a bluetooth headset, but it's still a (theoretical) solution looking for a mainstream problem to solve. There's a subset of very specialized users who will find something similar to this useful (if it ever really works right), but I believe they'll soon take their place next to personal rocket packs, flying cars and weather domes over cities as failed technology predictions.

I'm betting you're wrong. Have this running VPN over the phone already in your pocket, tied to cloud based software as a service, and suddenly you can have your computer (and the internet) *everywhere*, with no need to lug anything around, stare at your phone, or have others able to see what you're looking at. You can have truly immersive games, interacting with real objects, you can read books you don't have to hold (not even holding an e-ink reader), you can get descriptive information on whatever you're looking at, you can take pictures of whatever you're looking at, all without doing a damn thing you're not already doing.

My bet is that this starts with the geeks, and becomes mainstream really, really quickly. Which might pressure the design to be incorporated in a less geeky way, but the concept is solid and will fly with the majority of the public.

Heck, we've had presidents who couldn't even chew gum and walk at the same time, and they're going to release this to the general public? We're going to need accident insurance just to walk the street.

Just what we need, yet another connector type. Soon your USBrain connector will be outdated and new products will be switching to HDMInd, except Apple with their typically proprietary iSynapse connector.

And here I was, ready to announce that the google glasses are "beta", and that neural interface was coming when the product officially launched.